Don’t overcomplicate your note-taking

You’ll find that after using a third-party app for your note-taking, you’ll eventually revert back to the true, tried and fully tested Apple Notes.

Transcript

I've recently seen a lot of posts on Twitter where people are ditching their third-party notes apps and going over to the regular Apple Notes app on their Mac. And it got me thinking about how I take notes.

I never went to college or university, so I don't take notes in that specific way because I think they take notes in a special way. I basically take notes for things that I want to remember and then archive them, and then I can search for them.

But many want specific ways of searching their notes and categorising them. Hence they use a third-party app. Also, productivity gurus tell them this is what they should use.

However, what they've found is that after two or three months of using those apps, they get fed up and then default back to the Apple Notes app because it's actually a really powerful app. And the reason why it's so powerful is because it's so simple.

The problem is that a lot of people shy away from simplicity because they think it can't do everything they want it to do. Well, what do you need a notes app to do? You don't need all of the bells and whistles.

So there are droves of people going back to the basic notes app, which is a blank sheet of paper with a lot of features already!

I don't understand why people make things more complicated than they need to. If you think about it back in the early days without computers, and I've said this before, in my own business back then, I was using Rolodexes, there wasn't anything else. It was pen, paper, Rolodexes, and was it. We didn't have computers.

So you don't necessarily need a computer, but computers are there to help us. But we don't need to complicate the work we do on our computers.

People who use these third-party specialist apps are usually either productivity gurus selling you courses or techies who obviously do work and do like using them, but because they're techies. And it's a fun thing to do because it's something new.

But people who are actually working, who are actually out there grinding, working nine to five, doing work, are using the simplest apps possible. And one of them is Apple Notes.

So if you need a note-taking app, just use the Apple Notes app because you don't need to overcomplicate it with shiny things because of marketing.

What app do you use at the moment?